Topic -21: Articulatory Phonetics - I It is the branch of phonetics that studies articulators and their actions related to human speech production. Actually, we can only produce speech sounds by moving parts of our articulators (body parts, and this is done by the contraction of muscles. Most of the movements relevant to speech take place in the mouth and throat area (though we should not forget the activity in the chest for breath control, and parts of the mouth and throat area that we move when speaking. These are called articulators. In this branch of phonetics, we study the principal articulators (such as tongue, lips, lower jaw and the teeth, velum or soft palate, uvula and larynx) and other processes related to speech production. This includes the features of various sounds such as vowels and consonants and their specific properties including places and manners of articulation, phonation, etc.
